Heretofore, tires having decorative sidewalls have been well known and well received in the marketplace. The decorative portion of sidewalls have typically been formed by the co-extrusion of black rubber along with colored or white rubber, the resulting extrudate being applied to the sidewall of the tire and co-vulcanized therewith during the curing process. This co-extrusion process involves expensive materials, processing steps, and equipment. Further, the previously known process may result in blemishes, imperfections, voids and the like in the sidewall area, greatly increasing waste during the manufacturing process. The need to handle colored or white rubber stocks during tire manufacture has also proved inconvenient in many instances.
It has also become popular to design tires having decorations such as words, designs, letters, logos and the like on the sidewall, the same being introduced to the tire through molding or extruding processes which are also time consuming and expensive. As with the tires having decorative bands, these tires have a characteristic waste factor associated therewith, significantly adding to the manufacturing costs. The expense of sophisticated molds and dies to achieve such "custom" tires has made such tires unavailable to the average member of the consuming public.
An example of an uncured applique being co-cured with a green tire is found in U.S. Pat. No. 5,058,647. An example of an uncured applique applied to a cured tire is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 5,049,220. Both of these methods for providing a decorative sidewall onto a tire add to the processing difficulty and expense of the tire, as discussed hereinabove.
Therefore a need exists for an effective applique and method for applying the applique to a cured tire, which does not involve the expensive and time consuming curing processes associated at present with the manufacture of such pneumatic tires.